Navigating Snapdragon Sound for your devices

If you own a device powered by Snapdragon, chances are you’ve heard about the Snapdragon Sound™ Technology Suite. This technology is built into all modern PCs with Snapdragon and mobile device chips, giving you near lossless wireless audio quality, if you also have a compatible pair of headphones.

But before you can use Snapdragon Sound, there are some things you should know first.

How the Snapdragon Sound experience works

Since Snapdragon Sound is a premium audio codec suite, it requires a licensing fee to use. The manufacturer of the PC (think Asus, Lenovo, Microsoft, etc) will choose whether or not to pay this fee and include the Qualcomm® Bluetooth stack. If this is not included, you will get the Microsoft Bluetooth® audio stack, which will only include basic codecs like AAC, SBC and the ‘plain’ (and free) aptX codec.

For mobile devices it’s a similar experience. The handset manufacturer (like Samsung, Sony, Motorola, etc) will choose to pay the licensing fee and include the Snapdragon Sound codecs, or they will include the basic codecs as part of the Android OS.

Some device manufacturers will tell you whether or not they include this codec, but from my experience, most will not. You can use this device finder to find which laptops and mobile devices have the Snapdragon Sound codecs pre-installed.

Checking your devices

There are a few ways you can tell if your playback device is running Snapdragon Sound codecs.

The simplest way is having a pair of headphones/earbuds that “announce” or have an LED that displays a status depending on which codec it is using. For example, headphones like the Aventho series from BeyerDynamic has a voice prompt of which announces which codec its connected with. And earbuds like the Earfun Air Pro will display the codec its using in the app that you use to configure the device.

For Windows PCs it’s a bit more complicated. Since Windows itself does not display which codec is active, you will need to rely on another method - either using a device that can display/announce which codec you are using, or by manually checking after you connect your headphone to the computer.

Once connected, open Settings and navigate to Bluetooth and devices, then Devices, then find your headphones in the list and click to expand, and then click Advanced Sound Properties. Here you will see a few things like audio quality settings, however the most important one we are looking for is in the top right corner: Provider. If you are using the Qualcomm Bluetooth stack with the Snapdragon Sound codec, you should see the ‘provider’ name be “QUALCOMM”. Similarly, if the system is only using the Microsoft one which will only have basic codec support (like SBC & AAC), it will display Microsoft (or possibly the name of the computer manufacturer).

For mobile devices the process is a bit easier. Most audio devices will have a companion app that will usually display which codec they are using and even some will allow you to adjust which codecs they can use, if available. And if not, there are many apps in the app store that will allow you to display and adjust the current Bluetooth codecs.

The EarFun app allows you to see which codec is currently connected and you can even enable or disable specific codecs.

Universal Snapdragon Sound is possible

If your computer or phone doesn’t have the Qualcomm Bluetooth stack or correct licensing, don’t worry! There’s still a way to get Snapdragon Sound on your device regardless of if your device maker enables it.

There are a multitude of USB dongles available that act as Bluetooth receivers which contain the correct Qualcomm Bluetooth codecs and licensing to enable Snapdragon Sound. You can find these dongles once again using this device finder.

I purchased the Creative Bluetooth-W6 to test it out since it supports the highest quality codec of Snapdragon Sound, Qualcomm® aptX™ Adaptive Audio.

The Creative Bluetooth-W6 companion app Settings screen showing the current codec connection information

Because the dongle contains its own Bluetooth receiver, it will negotiate and connect to your headphones at the highest quality codec it contains. The Creative Bluetooth-W6 also has a companion app that will show you which codec it’s using with the ability to change any number of settings, including different codecs and audio quality settings. The dongle itself also has an LED that changes colour depending on which codec it’s using, which is an easy way to tell what quality codec it’s currently running.

The Creative Bluetooth-W6 dongle connected to my Microsoft Surface Laptop 15 with a yellow LED, which means aptX Lossless is active.

Aside from the Creative Bluetooth-W6, there are many additional options available as well with each supporting different combinations of codecs and offering different features and companion applications.

One of the best features of these types of devices is their versatility. You can use them in (most) any computer that you can connect them to, which means you can get Snapdragon Sound on pretty much any device, whether that be a laptop, desktop or even mobile phone.

From left to right: BeyerDynamic Aventho 100, Bose QuietComfort Ultra, EarFun Air Pro 4 are all Snapdragon Sound certified audio devices and what I used for testing in this article. Huge thank you to Snapdragon for gifting me the Bose QuietComfort Ultra!